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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29645421">Press on Bruises</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevereverever/pseuds/nevereverever'>nevereverever</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>changed forever [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>But also, Codependency, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Manipulation, Mild Sexual Content, Past Child Abuse, Post-Episode: c02e126 Worth Fighting For, Unconditional Love, Unhealthy Relationships, very mild but it's there</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 20:48:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,627</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29645421</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevereverever/pseuds/nevereverever</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I should just cut my fucking heart out," she says into the dark linen of his shirt. "It's caused me nothing but trouble."</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>"I can't believe Trent hasn't thought of that one yet. What does a Vollstrucker need a heart for anyway?" He reluctantly throws an arm around her back to keep her from falling. "I assume that your meeting with Bren went well." She laughs. </i></p><p> </p><p>Astrid and Eadwulf after the dance.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Astrid &amp; Eodwulf (Critical Role), Astrid/Eodwulf (Critical Role), Past Astrid/Eodwulf/Bren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>changed forever [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1926925</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>80</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Blumenkrew Fics</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Press on Bruises</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>If canon keeps proving my Blumentrio headcanons correct, I will simply keep making my headcanons sadder and sadder. I don't make the rules.</p><p>Mind the tags buddies, as always with these 2, this is <b>not healthy</b>. Sometimes being the thing that hurts the least is all you can do, but that doesn't make it okay.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Astrid doesn’t knock before entering Wulf’s house. She picks the lock and dispels the wards and goes stumbling into his home, desperate to not be alone. One of his servants, a young elven girl whose name Astrid never really learned comes running through the corridors, holding a small hand crossbow. Her finger is on the trigger and Astrid cast a reflexive Shield before she has time to think.</p><p>“Madam Beck!” The girl exclaims once she sees Astrid’s face, splotchy as it is with tears. “I’m sorry, the wards broke and I thought it was an intruder-”</p><p>“Where is he?” Astrid interrupts, impatient and exhausted. She rubs at one of her wrists, at the scars from years of acid and handcuffs and scalpels. The elven girl looks terrified, like she’s worried that Astrid might weave a spell and kill her, and something itches at her fingers that almost makes her want to. She doesn’t.</p><p>“He’s in the study. Would you like me to tell him you’re here?” she asks, her voice quaking. Astrid shakes her head and pushes past the poor girl into Eadwulf’s study.</p><p>“He knows it’s me,” she says as she opens the door. She's right. She's always right about him. He doesn't lash out, he barely even looks up.</p><p>His study itself is simple, but the papers arrayed in front of him are messy, scrawled with his awful handwriting. She tries to identify the spell as a reflex, but all she manages to glean is that it's based in abjuration.</p><p>"Don't dispel my wards, Astrid," he says, still writing on a seemingly random paper from the unruly stack. She sees the half-smile on his face and it turns her stomach. </p><p>"Your girl is a wizard, she can reset them," she replies, crossing the room in a few short strides.</p><p>"It's the principle. Why didn't you just message me?" He scratches out a section of his work with more force than is probably necessary. There is tension in his hand, in his jaw, and she can read clearer than the words on any page. </p><p>"I didn't prepare it today," she lies. In one smooth movement, she throws a leg over his chair and sits in his lap. He stiffens.</p><p>"I'm trying to work," he protests even as he sets down his pen. She's a slight woman, smaller than Bren, certainly smaller than Wulf, so she has no trouble fitting herself against him. She presses a kiss against his jaw. He hasn’t shaved for a few days. Something clawing and desperate in the back of her mind settles as she wraps her arms around him and holds tight.</p><p>"I should just cut my fucking heart out," she says into the dark linen of his shirt. "It's caused me nothing but trouble."</p><p>"I can't believe Trent hasn't thought of that one yet. What does a Vollstrucker need a heart for anyway?" He reluctantly throws an arm around her back to keep her from falling. "I assume that your meeting with Bren went well." She laughs.</p><p>"I told him that he was being watched. I told him that they were followed. And he asked me for amulets of protection. Stupid boy." The name tastes sour on her tongue. Eadwulf hums and she feels his chest rumble beneath her cheek.</p><p>"So what are you going to do about it?" He asks calmly, as if her choices were simple, as if the fate of their nation and their missing piece did not hang in the balance. She has never been sure whether to envy or despise his clarity of purpose.</p><p>"I don't know," she says, shakier than she would care to admit. She doesn't know who he is anymore, if he's lying, if he loves her, what his plans are. "I really don't."</p><p>"I don't know is not an acceptable answer, my dear," Eadwulf says in a near-perfect imitation of their master, "10 lashes." She chuckles but it isn’t funny.</p><p>"I think I'd deserve more than 10 lashes for the things we're planning, Wulfie." She doesn't say the 'I won't survive if he finds out what we're planning' that sits on the tip of her tongue but she's certain he hears it anyway. She slips her hands under the hem of his shirt and presses her palms flat against the warm expanse of skin.</p><p>"Then be careful, ja?" He nudges her head with his. She looks up and catches his eyes. There is something solemn and afraid in his gaze, so slight that anyone else in the world would have missed it. His arm tightens minutely around her lower back.</p><p>"I will try," she says, "I promise." She leans back into him and tucks her face into his shoulder. He is warm and solid, but so was Bren. And so is she, though she feels as though she might flicker out of existence at any moment. She presses her lips to his skin, once, then twice.</p><p>"What are you working on?" she asks. She trails her fingers up and down his ribs and smiles into his neck when he shivers. "Distract me."</p><p>“Well, I’m not working on anything at the moment seeing as you've separated me from my notes.” She whispers an incantation and cast Telekinesis to gently levitate his papers to be at eye level. </p><p>“Distract me,” she insists. He pinches her in the side but she doesn’t flinch.</p><p>"You're a little shit, you know that?" he says. She starts to suck a bruise into the skin of his shoulder, just to feel him shudder. Something about it feels clearer than the rest of her world tonight. At least she can do this, if all else fails, she can control him like this, his hands fisted in the fabric of her cloak. Anything to distract her from the painful, burning something that hasn't left her since the tiefling spoke to her at dawn.</p><p>"It's like Glyph of Warding, just more powerful. I know how," he muffles a gasp into her hair as she gently bites at the mark she left, "I know how to do damage with it, but there are other effects I want to try. Sassa, stop that, I have meetings tomorrow."</p><p>“Isn’t that what you goddess is for, Wulfie?” He sighs and she sees her hard work vanish in a glimmer of violet energy. “What are the components?”</p><p>“Opal or diamond, most likely. It’s not that though. It starts to fizzle before I even make it there. The more complicated the effect…” he trails off. She hums and turns the problem over in her head.</p><p>"Maybe you have to alter the runes in the interior of the circle. The second-order, perhaps," she whispers, pressing light kisses to his neck and the skin behind his ear. “Let the boundaries stay grounded in abjuration, but start weaving in the enchantment before the glyphs get too closed off.” She starts tracing sigils, just ideas, against his back with the point of her fingernail. He shivers again.</p><p>“I tried that,” he replies, frustrated, though probably more with her than the spell.</p><p>"Abjuration. Tied to an object or surface, yeah?" He nods, his chin bumping the top of her head.  "Opal or diamond,” she mutters, splaying her fingers across his back and then balling them into fists, “you need a tethering element. Mercury." She feels him lean forward to get a better look at his notes then fall back with a huff.</p><p>"I hate you," he says, pulling her in tight and holding her like she has been silently begging him to since she arrived. She drops her spell and the tension she has been holding since she dragged herself from panic in an alleyway starts to fall away. The breath she lets out is wet and shuddering and tells him thank you better than words ever could. “You’re a genius and I hate it."</p><p>"I'll always be a better wizard than you, raven speaker. Think about this the next time you go around fooling with the divine.” He laughs and with her ear to his chest, it feels like the only sound in the world. They sit like that for a while, Eadwulf tracing circles with his thumb against her back.</p><p>She feels safe in his arms. Well, the safest she can feel when every aspect of her life is saturated in danger, when it has seeped into every fiber of her psyche like ink staining fabric. She thinks of Bren- Caleb - and his friends, all staring at the two of them, flimsily cloaked in magic, looking for all the world as if they were ready to strike her down. She isn’t sure if it’s comforting to know that he has people who love him. The little halfling girl and the loud tiefling and the prickly Cobalt monk. The smooth-tongued half-orc and the odd firbolg and the looming barbarian woman. </p><p>The only person who loves her, who understands her is Wulf. But does it even count when they are really two halves of the same broken thing? Full of hard edges and wounds and spare moments of comfort. Bren had loved her once, but the man she danced with tonight was not Bren.</p><p>“When was the last time I told you that I love you?” she asks. His arms around her tighten and his silence is answer enough. “Wulfie, why do we keep hurting each other?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” he whispers into her hair. He rests his stubbly cheek on the crown of her head. She laughs and it sounds like a house fire and a clean scalpel and a key in a lock.</p><p>“10 lashes,” she replies, all but feeling the sting of the whip across her back. He doesn’t flinch, they’re far too numb for that now. “10 lashes.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Every time I finish one of these I'm like "Oof that's really sad why'd I write that?" And then I remember all you Blumentrio people who are in it for the sorrow, and I remember. I do it for y'all. I love you all very much. </p><p>Feel free to leave me a note, I appreciate every single one.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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